Life, one stitch at a time

I Need a Dermatologist, Stat!

So nothing new with Tay, first off. Still no crawling, but the rocking on hands and knees thing is still going on.
He had massive, leaking down the leg, puddling around his feet in his bouncer diarrhea last night that I failed to notice at first because I have a head cold and my sinuses are so clogged that I didn’t even smell the neon yellow poovalanche until it was decorating much of the bouncer, the boy and the floor.

Anyway, on to me.

A few weeks ago, following my recovery from the horrible, itching awful rash on my upper body (which seems to be due to an allergy to perfume in deoderant), the back of my knees turned bright red and also started itching. I put the same cream that worked on my armpits on my knees and the itching stopped, but the bright redness stayed. Then it became inflamed and now, over the past 3 weeks or so, the skin has become dry, brittle, purplish and painful and in the last few days, small pussy sores are erupting on the area (which now ranges from mid inner thigh to almost mid calf).
It used to just hurt when I bent my knees, but now the sores all hurt horrible, even when not bending my legs. I went to a doctor on Friday who has no clue what it could be (I have matching sore on my breasts, but without the pain and dry, discolored skin). At first she thought maybe impetigo, but apparently that’s only sores and not the bad skin. She’s supposedly trying to get me an emergency appointment with a dermatologist today, but I have yet to hear back from her. I’ll be stopping in on my way to pick up Tay to see if she was successful. If not, this may actually warrant a trip to the ER. I can’t hold my child on my lap very long from the pain. I can’t bend my knees without severe pain and I’m starting to have trouble walking, sleeping and even wearing pants from the painful sores. Clearly this can’t go on much longer without some sort of emergency treatment.

I’m intentionally NOT Googling the symptoms because I have enough scary ideas dancing through my head (lupus, cellulitis, other auto-immune disorders that are chronic and can only be somewhat controlled with pain management and no real cure). I’m just really hoping this can be taken care of soon, and hopefully with answers that aren’t too upsetting.

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yes you need to see a dermatologist! 3 weeks already, gosh how do you cope that long? If you phone one directly and explain what it is, you must get in a spot more easily no? Here in Leuven I usually can go really quickly. You’ve seen one before, why don’t you phone directly? I’ve learned not to show skin problems to my regular doctor, they always guess wrong and you lose time.

For years I used to go to Linda Temmerman who is now head of dermatology at the Maria Middelares hospital. I either went at her house in Kruishoutem privately or in the hospital. I see she has visits all day tomorrow. She doesn’t seem to have a very warm personality when you meet her but she’s always been pretty effective for me in the past.

I was sort of indoctrinated by my dad to believe that if you ignore a physical ailment long enough, it usually goes away. But aside from that, to be entirely honest, I get scared to find out something may be very bad. For instance, I thought I might’ve had an auto immune disorder. If I knew about it now and then tried to get insured in the US, it’d be a pre-existing condition and I’d have a harder time finding good insurance.

I have called directly to Maria Middelares and both times I called the only appointments available were 1-2 months wait. I couldn’t wait that long so I asked my regular doctor to call. I saw Dr. Temmerman for my under-arm rash and she basically said I was overweight so I must use more deo than normal people and that’s why I have an allergy. I told her I’d been overweight for about 9 years now and didn’t use excessive deoderant and that the problem began in my last trimester and maybe pregnancy caused the allergy. She seemed very set on me being fat being the reason I developed the allergy. So I asked to go to the other dermatologist at Maria Middelares. At least this one attributed my leg problem to a combination of fat and standing all day long in freezing temperatures with no proper heating.